WHO LOST NORTH KOREA? Lots

Lots of schadenfreude in the Right Blogosphere about the discovery that North Korea has been building nuclear weapons after all. Here’s an Andrew Sullivan post linked to by both Glenn Reynolds and Eugene Volokh. You can guess what all of them say: Clinton blew it again, the New York Times was wrong, yay for our team. No mention, of course, that one of the consequences of being committed to war with Iraq is that our capacity to do something about North Korea is diminished. And, of course, absolutely no mention of how the Administration kept the Congress in the dark for twelve days, long enough for the Iraq resolution to pass.

So I’m grateful to William Burton for unearthing this little gem. Turns out that as recently as April, Bush waived inspections requirements in order to give North Korea $95 million to keep building a “peaceful” reactor. Burton even notes that the contractor for the project — which would have been out of luck if Bush hadn’t found that the US national interest required the waiver — used to have Don Rumsfeld on its board.

Dollars to donuts none of this ever makes the real media. “Who controls the present controls the past, and who controls the past controls the future.”